Help! Tall grass weed - grows 2-3x faster than lawn

[Mthurm502]

Hello all, for the past several years I've had patches of this grass type weed in my yard and despite having my yard treated for weed control it doesn't die! It shows up in groupings in various parts of the yard, it grows incredibly fast and can get about 6-8 inches tall (maybe taller). Can someone please help identify this weed and tell me how I can get rid of it? For reference I am in Kentucky - Ohio river valley. Thank you!

[KeyWee]

This is just another kind of grass which is why it did not die after treatment. Herbicides put on lawns are mainly for broadleaf weeds so they won't kill anything in the grass family. I am thinking you are pretty lucky ~ in our yard we just have "green stuff" we mow into a "lawn" and very little of it resembles grass of any kind. You may have to spot spray (or dig) this to get rid of it ~ there are herbicides for grasses available. Don't let it go to seed!

[Mthurm502]

Thank you! I'll try it out! (It's taken a couple years to get mine to where there is more grass than "green stuff"

[nltaff]

The first picture looks to me like yellow nutsedge, which I have growing in some of my foundation gardens. Apparently, it is really hard to get rid of due to nodules on the rhizomes. Even if you pull it, root and all, these stay in the ground and continue to grow. The rest of the pictures look like couch grass, which I have all over my property. It, too, spreads by root, or rhizome, and I've never had any luck killing it, either. The roots snake under landscape cloth, poke and weave their way through it, and make a tangled mess of any mulch.

[nltaff]

Back with some pictures:

couch grass above

couch grass rhizome above

yellow nutsedge above

more yellow nutsedge above Other pictures I've found online seem to imply this weed likes wet soil. This is probably why it hasn't taken over my property because we are very dry and well-draining. Three years ago we had a little kitchen garden and an adjoining path that went around the house from the back door to the side/front deck. The path forked off, across the yard and down to our lower garage (which is now falling down). Long story short, the garden and paths became inundated with couch grass. You can pull forever, but those rhizomes stay and grow back. I forked up as many rhizomes as I could (discarded bushels of them). Placed new landscape cloth, mulched with small stone. I discarded the mulch and cloth from the path to the garage, filled in with soil and planted grass. On the stone path to the deck, I built a boardwalk. This is working fairly well, as I've only had to pull a few couch grass plants per year that poke through, or creep in from the rest of the lawn. I'm hoping this lasts for awhile.

Former kitchen garden above

Path and boardwalk to the deck above

Re-seeded old path above. The couch grass lives in the lawn and yes, it does grow higher and faster, but we can't really tell much difference because there's just so much of it all over. We are very rural and we get every weed seed flying through. Just doesn't make sense for us to try to get rid of them. I just try not to let them go to seed and to keep a sharply cut edge on my gardens (easier said than done).

[nltaff]

As KeyWee says, we just get out there and mow the green stuff, trying not to let it all go to seed and trying to keep it all under control. I'm the only one I know who routinely mows the driveway! (It's stone/gravel)